Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Making Chocolate vs Making Chocolates


Nathan Kurz

Recommended Posts

There have been several threads recently about making chocolate confections, and a few in the recent past about making chocolate from the bean. Strangely, there doesn't seem to be a lot of overlap between the two. From what I can tell, the people making bonbons don't seem to be the same people experimenting with melangeurs.

In English, we don't even have good terms to describe the difference, and some manufacturers gain advantage from this. Sometimes this is deceit, sometimes a convenient omission, and sometimes just an oversight. I recently bought a pricey sampler of 'single origin' chocolate bars from a high end shop based on the clerk's statements that they were made in house from the bean. Internet research showed this to be most likely false. I think this was just a poorly informed employee who was making the logical conclusion that a chocolate shop would make its own chocolate, but the manufacturer's own website certainly made no effort to clear up this confusion.

What do people think about this? What would be comparisons be to other products? Is a chocolatier that uses commercial couverture like a bakery that buys pre-made flour instead of grinding its own wheat, or is it like a bakery that buys all its products frozen and par-baked and while claiming that everything is 'baked fresh daily'. My feeling is that it depends greatly on the way it is presented. Talking about 'our chocolate made from our beans' is wrong if one is simply melting down a commercially available product, but using chocolate as a basic ingredient is fine so long as this is done without deceit: I don't expect a bakery to grind its own flour, but I do expect it to make its own dough.

But having recently made my own chocolate from the bean, and being surprised by the quality of the finished product, I'm surprised more people aren't interested in going this extra distance.

ps. Alan McClure, the owner of Patric Chocolate, has a more coherent post on this topic up on his blog:

http://www.patric-chocolate.com/store/2007...-chocolate.html

Edited by Nathan Kurz (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't believe it has ever been implied that a "chocolatier" is a manufacturer of chocolate. While one could do both ends of the process, I think most of the successful artisan chocolatiers use a known couverture. They are different skills, one is more a harvesting, manufacturing process on a large scale while the other (chocolatier) requires a broader range of more specified skills. I come from a farming family background and wouldn't consider the ones who planted, harvested and processed the wheat/corn to be the chefs but rather the manufacturers. I think a chocolatier is a person who manipulates a chocolate....any type...into a confection.

More power to those who do both and from a marketing standpoint it can be good but there are so many excellent commercially available chocolates I would think there are better ways to differentiate yourself. I view chocolate for the chocolatier as the canvas with which to show their artistry. I'd like to always use the most expensive brands but I also feel I can accomplish my art with more mainstream brands. To me, a chocolatier is the artist who creates a finished product...not the person who creates the chocolate. Don't get me wrong...I'm fascinated and impressed with those who make their own chocolate but I just think its a different process and is more aligned with a manufacturing process.

There have been several threads recently about making chocolate confections, and a few in the recent past about making chocolate from the bean.  Strangely, there doesn't seem to be a lot of overlap between the two.  From what I can tell, the people making bonbons don't seem to be the same people experimenting with melangeurs.

In English, we don't even have good terms to describe the difference, and some manufacturers gain advantage from this.  Sometimes this is deceit, sometimes a convenient omission, and sometimes just an oversight.  I recently bought a pricey sampler of 'single origin' chocolate bars from a shop in Oakland based on the clerk's statements that they were made in house from the bean.  Internet research showed this to be most likely false.  I think this was just a poorly informed employee who was making the logical conclusion that a chocolate shop would make its own chocolate, but the manufacturer's own website certainly made no effort to clear up this confusion.

What do people think about this?  What would be comparisons be to other products?  Is a chocolatier that uses commercial couverture like  a bakery that buys pre-made flour instead of grinding its own wheat, or is it like a bakery that buys all its products frozen and par-baked and while claiming that everything is 'baked fresh daily'.  My feeling is that it depends greatly on the way it is presented.  Talking about 'our chocolate made from our beans' is wrong if one is simply melting down a commercially available product, but using chocolate as a basic ingredient is fine so long as this is done without deceit:  I don't expect a bakery to grind its own flour, but I do expect it to make its own dough. 

But having recently made my own chocolate from the bean, and being surprised by the quality of the finished product, I'm surprised more people aren't interested in going this extra distance.

ps.  Alan McClure, the owner of Patric Chocolate, has a more coherent post on this topic up on his blog:

http://www.patric-chocolate.com/store/2007...-chocolate.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are only so many hours in a day to do what we need to do. I would love to make my own chocolate, but, because of time, I am better off by a high quality couverture from someone who has the time and expertise to make the chocolate. That is why you have chocolatiers, and also why you have chocolate manufacturers. I specialize in making delicious centres and molded shapes, I have decided to let the chocolate making professionals make the chocolate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a lot like the ice cream business. I took the Penn State "Ice Cream 101" short course a couple years ago in the hopes of perfecting my personal ice cream making.

What I found was the course was directed to potential "Mom and Pop" ice cream shops. They described what went into the ice cream base, but went on to state that no shop would actually be manufacturing the base. Like coveture, the base is available in a huge variety of formulations and you can generally find one that you prefer. The huge manufacturers produce the various formulations in bulk and the ice cream shop differentiates themselves by what they do with it. That includes various flavorings, inclusions, and the degree of overrun (air). The base is most economically and consistently produced in huge quantites which doesn't make it practical for the small shop. That's much like producing your own coveture for a truffle shop, though you could argue that the coveture is far more process intensive.

While I still love making ice cream I was a bit dissapointed with the minimal challenges and that is what led me to start working with chocolate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a lot like the ice cream business.

I think that is a good comparison, with but with a twist. While the vast majority of ice cream shops use an outside mix, there exists a high end of gelato shops who would not consider anything other than fresh ingredients. Whereas for chocolate, even the best chocolatiers (and I assume we have some of those represented here) tend to buy in their couverture.

On the other hand, it's all a matter of degree. While I would like to think that a gelato shop would start would start with milk, cream, sugar and eggs rather than their premixed dried counterparts, it would never occur to me to think that they should be refining their own sugar: http://www.southernmatters.com/sugarcane/essays.htm

I don't believe it has ever been implied that a "chocolatier" is a manufacturer of chocolate.

While I wouldn't presume that the chocolate for a filled truffle was made from the bean, I would like to presume that a shop selling a 72% single-origin bar did more than buy in commercial couverture, temper, and remold. And while it may not be implied, it was sufficiently unclear that even the employee within the shop presumed that this bar was made from the bean.

For me, I think it depends on the product, with the problem that 'chocolate' refers to everything from the plant to the ingredient to the finished product. But in the case of a bar, which has as its sole ingredient the bought in component, I feel uneasy. It depends on the representation, though. Have you read the Dallas Food article about Noka: http://www.dallasfood.org/modules.php?name...=article&sid=78

This is not meant to be argumentative. I'm considering entering into some part of both the chocolate and ice cream market, and am genuinely interested in where these lines are.

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's close but not a perfect comparison since it is much easier to mix your own ice cream base in house than it is to process cocoa beans. I suppose a shop with a very small output could manufacture the chocolate they use, but the amount of time and floor space required for the manufacture would likely dwarf that required for the confectionary side.

The Penn State instructor's point was that you could purchase premade bases of whatever quality level you were looking for. Some are cheap and others are more expensive, all based on the quality and percentage of ingredients. The bases aren't dry powders either, but rather come shipped in large plastic bags that need to be kept refrigerated. I did not verify this, but supposedly even a high end shop could find a base to suit them.

Now that is all fine when you are using the base or your coveture as an ingredient, but everything changes when it becomes your end product. Repackaging someone else's product as your own with no added value is nonsense at best and deceit at worst.

I've read the article on Noka and it certainly sounds as though they were actively deceiving the public to get them to pay a huge markup for the repackaging (and imperfect tempering to boot). If true that would put them in the category of scamer rather than chocolatier.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...